Struggling to make yourself heard and get respect in board meetings? Use these fool-proof techniques to improve your presentation and confidence. If you’re not getting the respect and attention you deserve when you speak in the boardroom, there are lots of tools and techniques you can use to help get your voice across.
How to make an impact in board meetings
This article talks you through some of the best techniques and tactics for ensuring you get heard and make an impression in board meetings.
Trust your expertise
The best way to make yourself heard in board meetings is to make sure you can back your argument up with facts and figures. This means researching the business well enough so that when it comes time for a debate in board meetings, you have all of the facts at hand to defend your point of view.
It’s also important to consider data from a variety of different sources. If the statistics can be backed up with references to credible, independent research then you’ll have a much stronger argument. Providing details about your previous sales performance is another way to prove you know what you’re talking about.
Many board members will also want to hear how this information will impact their company – so make sure you also consider how it will affect the company’s profits, or what it will mean for shareholders.
Be clear in advance about your goals, topics and / or ideas that you want to implement. Make a note of your most important key messages so that you can always have them in mind and formulate them during the meeting. Because only those who are able to express their interests clearly have any chance of receiving attention. In addition, you should prepare yourself in advance for potential objections and criticisms in order to be able to respond confidently to them.
Choose your words carefully
If you start a sentence with ‘I think’, there’s a good chance you won’t be taken seriously in board meetings. So make sure that when you do speak in the boardroom or during a meeting, you use language that suggests that your thoughts are well-informed and backed up by reliable research. If you’re not sure, always ask yourself ‘how would my boss speak in this situation?’
It can also be useful to use business jargon in board meetings. If you struggle with the corporate language that most boardrooms are filled with then it might be worth brushing up on some of the key terms and phrases used by professionals.
Practice speaking
The best way to get used to speaking up in board meetings is by attending as many of them as possible. This way you’ll become more confident with the process, which will make it easier for you to contribute when needed.
You might also want to consider speaking up during other meetings before getting involved in a boardroom debate. If you’ve already undertaken assertiveness training, or if your organization offers assertiveness training, then this is also a good opportunity to practice voicing your opinion.
Board governance can be tricky to master. There are so many people in the room, you need to make sure you’re on top of the situation and keeping things on track. That’s why it helps to practice speaking beforehand so you feel confident going in.
In many cases, our voice decides whether we appear confident and competent or insecure. It is not without reason that politicians and managers receive special voice training. In a virtual meeting, clear articulation is even more important than in a face-to-face format. Only those who are well and clearly understood can assert themselves in board meetings.
Ask yourself: Am I speaking loud enough and powerfully? Am I easy to understand? How is the voice quality? Do not speak too quickly and take deliberate pauses in which you keep looking for eye contact with your colleagues. As a result, the participants feel: they are being addressed directly, they appear more present and can assert themselves better.
Be positive
Building relationships with your board members is key. It’s much easier to convince someone to agree with you if they think you are positive about what’s being said, and that the proposed plans will do the company good. Staying calm under pressure also helps – so if things do get heated, it’s important not to lose your temper.
Some people might suggest you take a passive approach and let other people speak first in board meetings, but this won’t help you to get your voice heard. Instead, be assertive and confident when the time comes for you to contribute. If you can build positive relationships with your board members, they’ll be much more likely to listen to you.
Ask questions
If you’re not immediately sure about the plans and ideas being presented, it can be difficult to get your opinion across. The best thing to do in this situation is to ask questions – don’t make assumptions about what people are saying.
You might also want to say something like, “It sounds like we’re all on the same page here, I’ll go along with what everyone else is saying if that’s okay.” Of course, you might have concerns about what’s being proposed, but communicating those concerns will be a lot easier if you can demonstrate you are on board.
After you have presented something yourself in board meetings, you can also ask the other participants for questions or statements in order to actively involve them. This gives them the feeling that they have worked on the solution themselves and that they are more open to your approach. Keep picking individual people and asking them for their opinion. This is how you secure the attention of your audience.
Be physically strong
Those who make themselves physically small are perceived as less self-confident and sovereign and run the risk of not really being seen, heard and understood. Remember that our outward posture also affects our inner posture. That is why you should consciously keep yourself upright in board meetings and take up a lot of space for yourself with gestures that tend to be more expansive.
For example, you can sit in front of the edge of your chair or clamp a cushion between your back and the armrest to support your upright posture. This not only has a positive effect on your external image, but also automatically on your pronunciation and voice and thus also on your assertiveness.
Conclusion
Some board meetings are so dominated by particular individuals that the rest of the board — and with it their views — are lost. You can set rules for the way you work together, but experience shows that the further you go up in the hierarchy, these rules are more and more disregarded. Everyone thinks his statements are the most important. Personal conflicts also play a role. Some people don’t even want to let their counterparts have their say. In short, what you want to say is sometimes not even heard. And this “loud” and intrusive atmosphere is certainly not the ideal environment for productive discussion.
In order to be able to improve your assertiveness in board meetings, it is important to reflect on your performance after each meeting: Have you presented all the key statements and arguments that you wanted to? How did the others react to you? Don’t throw the the towel in right away if things don’t go the way you imagined. We don’t learn assertiveness overnight. Rather, it is a constant learning process and every meeting is a new lesson. By following these simple steps you’ll soon find it much easier to be assertive when needed in board meetings.
